The objective of a performance evaluation is to boost the employees motivation and to learn ways to improve your business.
Hopefully the following are already part of your performance evaluation process. If so, congratulations. Your are in the Top 5% when it comes to effective performance evaluations.
- Ask your employees what the top three goals are for the business. Many times employees can’t answer that question. Your employees can’t be on the same page unless they understand the goals. Often we assume everyone understands the goals to achieve our mission.
- Next, ask employees how they would take business away from your company if they were competing with you. This gives employees the chance to identify any weaknesses the company has. Managers are often surprised how quickly employees can identify weaknesses or shortcomings, especially hourly employees.
- See if employees can identify “business changers.” Ideas that can make a significant difference in how you conduct business. Ask employees what they would change to take your business to the next level. What they would do if they could change anything. Your objective to to help employees think of ways to do your business differently. Another way to ask the question is to ask them what parts of their job drives them nuts. Follow-up question of course is what they would do to fix it.
We are all busy. It’s easy to just concentrate on immediate performance when giving an evaluation. Many managers view performance evaluations as “unpleasant” or “a waste of time, the employee already knows how they are doing and where they stand.”
Human Resources Departments need to remind managers of the objective of the performance evaluation is to improve employee motivation and improve the business.
How does HR make that happen? Add a Standard of Performance that states each manager needs to gain one idea per employee on how to make the company better. Then, when you send them an email on the date of their next performance evaluation remind them to ask the employee of ideas on how the business can be made better. Don’t assume they remember. Like all of us, your managers have a lot on their minds. It’s easy for details to slip. Especially on portions of their jobs they don’t do often.
